[Vm-dev] Primitive to crop a ByteArray?

Mariano Martinez Peck marianopeck at gmail.com
Thu Nov 8 21:42:06 UTC 2012


On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 4:48 PM, Mariano Martinez Peck
<marianopeck at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 4:38 PM, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
>>
>> On 2012-11-08, at 16:22, Mariano Martinez Peck <marianopeck at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi guys. I have the following scenario. I have a buffer (ByteArray)
>>> that I pass by FFI to a function of size N. This function puts data in
>>> the array and answers me the M number of bytes that it put. M <= N.
>>> Finally, I need to copy the array of size N to the accuare size M.
>>> To do that, I am using #copyFrom:to:. If the ByteArray is large (which
>>> could be the case), this function takes significant time because it
>>> needs to allocate space for the new large resulting array. So...is
>>> there a destructive primitive where I can "crop" the existing array,
>>> modify its size field and mark the remaining bytes as "free space for
>>> the heap".
>>>
>>> Do we have a primitive for that?
>>
>> We do not have any primitive that changes an object's size.
>
> :(
>
>>
>> However, if your problem is indeed the time for allocating the new array, then maybe there should be a primitive for that? E.g. one that copies a portion of one array to a new object. This would avoid having to initialize the memory of the new array - this is what's taking time, otherwise allocation is normally constant in time.
>>
>> OTOH it seems unusual that you would have to use extremely large buffers where initialization time matters. E.g. if you were to use this for reading from a file or stream then it might make more sense to use many smaller buffers rather than a single huge one, no?
>>
>
> Hi Bert. I should have explained better. The library I am wrapping is
> LZ4, a fast compressor: http://code.google.com/p/lz4/
> The function to compress looks like this:
>
> int LZ4_compress   (const char* source, char* dest, int isize);
>
> /*
> LZ4_compress() :
>     Compresses 'isize' bytes from 'source' into 'dest'.
>     Destination buffer must be already allocated,
>     and must be sized to handle worst cases situations (input data not
> compressible)
>     Worst case size evaluation is provided by macro LZ4_compressBound()
>
>     isize  : is the input size. Max supported value is ~1.9GB
>     return : the number of bytes written in buffer dest
>
>
> So, from the image side, I am doing (summarized):
>
> dest := ByteArray new: (self funcCompressBound: aByteArray size) + 4.
> bytesCompressedOrError := self funcCompress: aByteArray
> byteArrayDestination: dest isize: aByteArray size maxOutputSize:
> maxOutputSize .
> compressed := dest copyFrom: 1 to: bytesCompressedOrError + 4.
>
> But a normal scenario of compression is when the bytearray is indeed
> quite large. The function requires that "dest" is already allocated.
> And then I need to do the #copyFrom:to:, and that is what I was trying
> to avoid.
>
>

maybe there is something faster than #copyFrom:to:  for this case?

>> - Bert -
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Mariano
> http://marianopeck.wordpress.com



--
Mariano
http://marianopeck.wordpress.com


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